Donald Trump announced on Tuesday an agreement with the American laboratory Pfizer to lower the price of certain drugs in the United States in exchange for an exemption from customs duties, a victory according to the Republican who promised Americans spectacular savings in this area.
"We will now pay the lowest prices," he declared at a White House press conference during which Albert Bourla, head of Pfizer, assured that "the big winners" would "clearly be American patients."
Drug prices in the United States are among the highest in the world and exceed those in its neighboring countries and Europe, a situation that the American president has pledged to change, promising drastic reductions.
After failing to do so during his first term, Donald Trump has in recent months multiplied measures and threats against the pharmaceutical sector in order to push laboratories to repatriate their production to American soil and to voluntarily lower their prices.
This is what Pfizer has committed to, announcing a series of measures to this effect on Tuesday.
The company will lower the selling price of several of its drugs to Medicaid, the health insurance for the poorest, and will also offer others for purchase at reduced prices from a government-run website that will soon be accessible to patients.
These drugs will be offered "with discounts of up to 85%," and 50% on average, Pfizer detailed in a press release.
– 100% customs duties –
In addition, "any new drug introduced by Pfizer into the American market will be sold at a reduced cost," Donald Trump explained, specifying that prices would thus be aligned with the lowest applied in other developed countries.
However, the practical details, including the number of drugs affected and the actual savings it will allow Americans to make, remain unclear.
While they have "made headlines," Donald Trump's efforts to lower drug prices have so far had little effect, left-wing Senator Bernie Sanders lamented in a report on the subject on Monday, pointing out that the price of hundreds of drugs has instead increased.
Pfizer also announced Tuesday that it would invest an additional $70 billion in its infrastructure in the United States. Donald Trump hinted that similar agreements with other laboratories could follow.
In exchange for these price cuts, Pfizer will be able to benefit from a three-year exemption from the prohibitive customs duties that the American president is threatening the sector with, it was announced on Tuesday.
The Republican recently raised the possibility of imposing a tax of 100% on all patented drugs imported from October 1, unless the laboratories build production sites in the United States.
The terms of these shock customs duties, which would hit the world's largest pharmaceutical market hard, nevertheless remain very unclear just hours before their theoretical entry into force.
One of the major issues in these negotiations is the question of rebalancing prices between the United States and other developed countries. Laboratories justify the high prices imposed on Americans by the need to finance their research and development work in order to enable the discovery of new treatments.
A decrease in treatment prices in the United States could thus be accompanied by an increase elsewhere in the world.
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